“A corrupt woman,” he concluded aloud, sitting in his study, alone but not alone, in the darkest hours of that night.
YOU ALWAYS KNEW IT AND ALWAYS SAW IT.
“I tried to deceive myself to spare her.”
SPARE HER? FOR WHAT REASON? TO WHAT PURPOSE?
Alexei Alexandrovich had never been so glad for the presence of his metal-thinking attachment, his secret beloved-companion-for it could bluntly address those things he could think but never express. Its mechanical eye showed him dark mysteries, and its voice demanded he acknowledge life’s darker truths.
“I made a mistake in linking my life to hers, but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy.”
BUT SHE… SHE MUST BE MADE UNHAPPY.
Everything relating to her and her son, toward whom his sentiments were as much changed as toward her, ceased to interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the question of in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and useful existence.
Even as he processed these perfectly rational thoughts, even congratulating himself on his ability to remain logical in the grip of emotional distress, his body, guided by the vicious impulses of the Face, obeyed a different course. Alexei Alexandrovich strode briskly into the bedroom while siding onto his ring finger, just above his wedding ring, a small silver burn-circle-an ingenious groznium-based device of his own invention-and set about incinerating his wife’s possessions with cruel efficiency.
“I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has committed a crime,” he said, and, leveling his hand carefully, blasted Anna Karenina’s ancient and stately armoire to splinters with the burn-circle.
“I have only to find the best way out of the difficult position in which she has placed me.”
He aimed at and destroyed her birch-wood dressing table.
“And I shall find it.”
YOU SHALL FIND IT INDEED.
Moving rapidly, deeply inhaling the sharp, pleasing scent of burnt furniture mixed with perfumes and bedside lotions, he felt that he could think clearly for the first time in a long time. In his study Alexei Alexandrovich walked up and down twice, then stopped at the household’s expensive and stately freestanding monitor. He bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to dictate a communiqué, without pausing for a second.
“At our last conversation,” he began, “I notified you of my intention to communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am contacting you now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power, and the beneficence of the Ministry. The family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and your son. I trust that you understand.”
“Yes, time will pass-time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be re-established,” Alexei Alexandrovich announced to the Face, which fairly cackled its pleasure at the implied threat Alexei had leveled at his wife: to be subject to his will, or be destroyed. “So far reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.”
Having completed and transmitted his communiqué, he returned to the bedchamber, slipping back on his burn-circle as he went. With calm deliberateness Alexei Alexandrovich destroyed the four-post bed in which he and his wife had lain together so many times. The sheets of silk and linen easily took to flame, and Alexei Alexandrovich, tucking his fleshy hand comfortably into the crook of his arm, watched the fire grow-the Face whispering GOOD GOOD GOOD as the bed was consumed into ash.
CHAPTER 7
THOUGH ANNA HAD OBSTINATELY and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it.
On the way home from the Cull she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony of the moment, she was glad of it. After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell him.
When she woke up the next morning, Android Karenina was seated with perfect poise at her bedside, having completed her morning routines, and gazing down with calm beneficence upon her mistress; as Anna opened her eyes she saw the Class III there, silhouetted against the day’s first light-they stared at one another, eyes into faceplate, sharing one brief intense moment before Android Karenina rose to fetch her mistress’s dressing gown.
In the perfect serenity of the new day, the words she had spoken to her husband seemed to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexei Alexandrovich had gone away without saying anything. “I saw Vronsky and did not tell him,” she said to Android Karenina, as the Class III slipped her gown over her porcelain shoulders.
“At the very instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell him?” In answer to this question Android Karenina issued a light, empathetic whistle and tidied the bedclothes.
Anna’s position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before. When she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer.
When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed to her that the words that she had spoken to her husband, and had continually repeated in her imagination, she had said to everyone, and everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look those of her own household in the face. She could not bring herself to call her II/Maid/76, and still less go downstairs and see her son and his II/Governess/D145.
As she fretted and paced about her room, her anxiety deepened into a distinct feeling of dread, reminding her powerfully and unpleasantly of her feeling at the Moscow Grav station, watching the body of the man lifted from the tracks. Android Karenina then beeped gently, signaling receipt of a communiqué, and Anna, trembling, bid her play it. Just moments before, she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken. And here this communiqué regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she had wanted. But the communiqué seemed to her more awful than anything she had been able to conceive.